


Simple As That

by 221bdragonslayer



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Best Friends, Cute science babies are cute, F/M, Fluff, SHIELD Academy Era, and oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 00:17:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15762711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221bdragonslayer/pseuds/221bdragonslayer
Summary: Academy Era. When a bad date leaves Jemma Simmons sopping wet and seeking consolation at her best friend's dorm at 2 am, Fitz delivers. And if he just happens to lend her his clothes and fall asleep curled up with her on the sofa, isn't that just what a best friend does?





	Simple As That

The last person Leopold Fitz expected to find on the other side of his window throwing pebbles at two o’ clock in the morning was Jemma Simmons: Jemma Simmons, who was known to possess the ability and inclination to quote the Academy’s dorm rules on the spot at any given time (with that given time usually being when she was eyeing the microwave and toaster--or as the Academy preferred to term them, "firehazards"--that he had smuggled into his room. But that rule was purely for the benefit of the incapable Operations students whose blowing things up didn't end when they left the training field, he always argued, and if an engineering student couldn’t keep a simple appliance from catching on fire, then what good was he really?)

He shuffled out of his room, down the hall, and to the door as quickly as he could without abandoning his slippers (from his mum’s last package and one size too large) like a gender-bent Cinderella. Flinging it open, he found Jemma’s doleful brown eyes staring at him from under dripping bangs.

“Jemm—” he began to exclaim.

“Shhh, Fitz!” she hissed. “Will you please just let me come in?”

“But you’re not supposed to be in a man’s rooms after—”

She glanced around her quickly and leaned in closer as if the RA might be lurking around any corner, despite the fact that this particular dorm had few corners capable of much more than a lurking fly. “Exactly. Now, please, let me in.” It was then he heard the tremble in her voice. Fitz nodded without another thought, grabbing her arm and gently pulling her to his dorm. Everyone else was in bed—some in bed but not asleep, as evident by the glow of phone and laptop screens that bleached away small patches of the shadows in front of their doors. He hustled Jemma down the hall quickly just in case.

“What’s going on?” he asked as his room door clicked firmly shut behind them. “Why were you out so late? And why are you soaking wet?”

“Quit sounding like my mother,” Jemma said sullenly, plopping down on his couch and hugging one of his cushions to her chest.

“Oi! You’re getting my couch wet,” he exclaimed.

Jemma turned her head, but it was too late: he had already seen the glisten in her eyes. Oh, no. He was sure that he never seen Jemma Simmons cry, and he was even surer that he had no idea what to do about it. But his subconscious seemed to even if his brain didn’t, and the next thing Fitz knew, he was impulsively pulling her into a fierce and slightly awkward hug.

“I’m getting you wet, Fitz,” Jemma said with a sniff and a slightly tearful laugh.

“My pillows are already. I might as well be too.” Nonetheless, he wondered if that had been a hint to let go and did, his cheeks flushing. “Now, who made you cry? Was it your date? Do I need to kick his butt?”

Jemma was smiling again now, her _Oh, Fitz_ smile, and he drew himself up as tall as he could, insulted. “What? You don’t think I could?”

“Of course you could,” she said in a tone utterly soothing but lacking belief. Her smile faded; her eyes dropped to where her fingers traced the embroidered swirls and flowers on his pillow (his mum’s packages again). “The student from Ops—” Fitz noticed she primly avoided his name as if it were a curse—"and I had a row. We’d gone out in his car, and he was bringing me home. About a mile from campus, we decided we’d had more than enough of each other’s company. I told him that I could walk the rest of the way, thank you very much.”

Well, she had, and—knowing Jemma Simmons as Fitz did—she had with her chin held high, her eyes steely, and her lips set in a determined line. Even after it had started to downpour. But now, as he stared at her sitting tired, cold, and disappointed on his sofa at 2 am in the morning, Jemma’s shoulders had never seemed so small and her mouth less steady.

Fitz determined to fix that.

“Can’t you send you walking back to your dorm on this chilly night like this. Here, dry off.” He grabbed a handful of towels and dumped them in a heap in her lap; thankfully, Jemma didn’t question how long it had been since they were washed (although he could say that they were mostly clean, mostly truthfully.)

“You’ll need something dry to put on,” Fitz said, rummaging through his drawers while she dried her hair. He found a pair of sweatpants reserved for bed and the sweatshirt emblazoned with the Shield Academy logo that he wore only when he went out for a once in a millennium jog to prepare for his next field assessment. Jemma grabbed the clothes from his hand, and he turned his back so she could change. As long as he was forced to look in this direction, Fitz figured, he might as well be looking for something to eat. Wasn’t that what one was supposed to do after a bad date? Eat a whole carton of ice cream or whatever? But he didn’t have any ice cream, and at any rate, it was his objective here to stop Jemma’s shivering rather than increasing it. In the box of food he kept under his bed to sustain him between the sometimes less than appetizing meals provided by the Academy’s dining hall, he found a can of soup, a loaf of bread, and half a jar of some particularly lovely jam.

“You want to pop in some Doctor Who when you’re done?” he called over his shoulder as he set about making copious amounts of toast and spreading them with jam. “You know where it is.” Failed dates with tall, handsome jerks definitely called for binge-watching Doctor Who. He blessed his luck once again that his roommate had transferred out of Shield Academy, leaving him with a room all to himself and a stash of food that he no longer had to share half of as a bribe to keep his forbidden appliances secret.

“Okay,” Jemma called back, fabric still rustling. A moment later, it stopped and was replaced by the quiet beep of the DVD player indicating that it had accepted a disk. Fitz grabbed the two bowls of soup from the microwave, handed one to Jemma, and returned for the plate piled high with toast.

Leopold Fitz saw Jemma Simmons as his best friend in the world. He saw her in their shared lab during their general science elective, eyes intent and hands perfectly steady as she added a sizzling drop to a chemical compound in a beaker. He saw her biting her lip in concentration as she scribbled on their shared study notes on the other side of what had become their table at the Shield Academy café. He saw her with her cheeks flushed and hands gesturing in wild motion as she argued with him about something or another. But here—here where she was sitting cross-legged on his sofa, in his sweatpants and sweatshirt that were just a tiny bit too big and a ponytail that was still slightly damp, munching a crust of toast and licking jam off her lips—he saw Jemma Simmons in an entirely new way.

She was completely, utterly adorable.

Fitz had absolutely no idea what to do with that knowledge or the way his heart flipped or the way he would have offered it to her on a stick at that moment if she had asked. So, instead he sat down beside her on the sofa, snagged a piece of toast, accused her of hogging the ones with the most jam, and watched Doctor Who.

He was her best friend, after all—of course he saw in her what others couldn’t see.

 

* * *

 

 

Jemma woke up to the gentle inhale and exhale of Fitz’s breath—warm and smelling of strawberries—on her ear.

Between one episode and the next, she realized, they must have fallen asleep. She had no idea who had fallen asleep first—or who in their sleep had first curled in toward the other. Her head was resting on Fitz’s shoulder, the rest of her body tucked against the curve of his side. His arms were wrapped around her, holding her as he must have cuddled a dearly beloved teddy bear when he was a child.

And for a moment she worried because they were just friends, as she insisted to the employee at the Academy’s café, her roommate, her dates over the past year, and even the janitor who smiled at them when he found them working together late one night on a project at the lab. And she wasn’t sure if this counted as “just friends.” But it felt so right—being close enough to Fitz to feel the gentle rhythm of his heartbeat, listening to the soft whistle of his breath as he slept, feeling so warm and cozy and peaceful in the folds of his clothes and the scent of him that they carried? How could something that felt this right be wrong?

She still wasn’t sure why she had come to Leo Fitz’s dorm, breaking rules and braving the wrath of the RA, in her misery after her awful date. Or why she felt as content as she did right now when her evening had been ruined thanks to the guy from Operations who didn’t care a whit about a word that came out of her mouth and only wanted to kiss it.

But, she knew that he was her friend, and he was here for her. It was as simple as that.

Plus, even with the time she had to allow to avoid any early risers and potential witnesses she might encounter on her way back to the dorm, she still had an hour or two to spare. So Jemma Simmons snuggled down a little further into him and allowed her drowsy eyelids to drift back down.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written or posted a Fitzsimmons fic before and am still mad about Season 5, so I thought writing adorkable science babies from pre-season 1 would be a good start! Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!


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